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0098 Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2
中国砂漠地帯の遺跡 : vol.2
Ruins of Desert Cathay : vol.2 / 98 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000213
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CHAPTER LV

DISCOVERY OF HAN RECORDS

Next morning broke with an icy north wind which later on
shifted round to the north-west without losing any of its
violence. My first business was to despatch one of the
Ya-mên messengers with a letter to the magistrate asking
for more labourers to push on excavations. Then I set
out with every available man for the ruin sighted due south
of our camp and next to the one prospected in the evening.
The camp was to follow with a supply of water in tanks.
It was essential to spare our handful of diggers all needless
tramps to and fro; for I rightly suspected that with such
shifty folk, all confirmed opium-smokers, the stimulus
supplied by liberal rewards for finds would not hold out
long, but only increase the craving for a good smoke and
sleep in a warm den.

The watch-tower, for such it was, proved badly decayed;
but thick layers of refuse covered the south slope of the
low clay ridge on which as usual it had been built for the
sake of better look-out, over some ten yards of length. At
the foot of the slope they were fully three to four feet
high. The chief ingredients were straw, twigs and bark
of tamarisks, dung of horses—evidently mainly stable
refuse of some watch and post station thrown down here.
But from the very edge on the top there protruded
the fragment of an inscribed Chinese tablet, and as more
wooden records cropped up I promptly settled down to
work here.

The harvest was abundant. Before mid-day two dozen
or so of inscribed pieces had emerged, and the precious
refuse heap was far from being exhausted. Chiang was

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